The rationale for this module is as follows: Perl programs are deployed on many different platforms and integrated with many different systems. Systems administrators and end users may prefer different configuration formats than the developers. The flexibility inherent in a multiple format configuration loader allows different users to make different choices, without generating extra work for the developers. As a developer you only need to learn a single interface to be able to use the power of different configuration formats.

load_files() attempts to load configuration from the list of files passed in the files parameter, if the file exists.

If the filter parameter is set, it is used as a callback to modify the configuration data before it is returned. It will be passed a single hash-reference parameter which it should modify in-place.

If the use_ext parameter is defined, the loader will attempt to parse the file extension from each filename and will skip the file unless it matches a standard extension for the loading plugins. Only plugins whose standard extensions match the file extension will be used. For efficiency reasons, its use is encouraged, but be aware that you will lose flexibility -- for example, a file called myapp.cfg containing YAML data will not be offered to the YAML plugin, whereas myapp.yml or myapp.yaml would be.

When the flatten_to_hash parameter is defined, the loader will return a hash keyed on the file names, as opposed to the usual list of single-key hashes.

load_files() also supports a 'force_plugins' parameter, whose value should be an arrayref of plugin names like Config::Any::INI. Its intended use is to allow the use of a non-standard file extension while forcing it to be offered to a particular parser. It is not compatible with 'use_ext'.

You can supply a driver_args hashref to pass special options to a particular parser object. Example:

load_stems() attempts to load configuration from a list of files which it generates by combining the filename stems list passed in the stems parameter with the potential filename extensions from each loader, which you can check with the extensions() classmethod described below. Once this list of possible filenames is built it is treated exactly as in load_files() above, as which it takes the same parameters. Please read the load_files() documentation before using this method.

finder( )

The finder() classmethod returns the Module::Pluggable::Object object which is used to load the plugins. See the documentation for that module for more information.

plugins( )

extensions( )

The extensions() classmethod returns the possible file extensions which can be loaded by load_stems() and load_files(). This may be useful if you set the use_ext parameter to those methods.

DIAGNOSTICS

No files specified! or No stems specified!

The load_files() and load_stems() methods will issue this warning if called with an empty list of files/stems to load.

_load requires a arrayref of file paths

This fatal error will be thrown by the internal _load method. It should not occur but is specified here for completeness. If your code dies with this error, please email a failing test case to the authors below.

LICENCE AND COPYRIGHT

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See perlartistic.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

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